Okay, I know this is a family blog but we’re going to talk about sex this week (stop sniggering at the back!). The book I’m working now on requires a frank and realistic approach to sex scenes, but has led me to look back on my oversexed hero of novels past.

Jeffrey Flint is a bit of a lad, indeed some would say ‘womaniser’. He’s not manipulative, he doesn’t have any kind of plan, but he simply loves women. Young, smart, fun and politically on-message what’s not to like? Except he’s a little too ‘summer of love’ to suggest he’s capable of commitment. Not for Flint is that long-suffering spouse to return to after each adventure, to ground him in reality. He remains a free spirit.

So, Flint flits from woman to woman, between and often within books. When I was discussing Byron’s Shadow over lunch with Ingrid – my editor at the time – she suggested the books needed more sex. I went home and wrote a card, which I pinned on the slanting ceiling of my garret – ‘Ingrid wants more sex’.

But in the end I pulled my punches. Mummy porn wasn’t mainstream at that time and I feared writing purple-prose laden bad sex. I wanted also to avoid clinical scenes that read like model aeroplane instructions, viz ‘place axle (12) in wheel hub (13) but do not glue’. . We’re all adults and we all know what happens. We also know that it takes a good deal longer than the 37 seconds shown in the average TV naughty scene. To relate a full passionate encounter blow-by-blow would take pages and pages and be cringingly dull (to me). Even worse where Maddy Crowe is my viewpoint character.

Then I always wonder how much of an author’s sex scenes give away about their own love life, their own frustrations and fantasies? There’s a lot of personal anecdote woven into the Flint books, and I have name-checked a couple of my friends but no characters are based on real people. Still there’s a worry that the curious might strive to identify the ‘real’ Vikki, Lisa, Willow, Maddy, A1, Chrissie and the rest of the cast. In end I hint, give a flavour and no more. I know what is going on, and the reader can fill in the blanks. Flint’s sex life is funny, quirky, offbeat and impulsive. Its also an essential component of the plots rather than being merely there to titillate.

A reader once asked me about a beach scene in Byron’s Shadow when Flint and Lisa are together. ‘What did they actually do?’ she asked. I just smiled.